Directors Guild of America (DGA) Award dinner on January 31, 2009

Danny Boyle's `Slumdog Millionaire' wins DGA Feature Film Award

Los Angeles, CA, Feb. 01, 2009
Raj, NRIpress

The winners of the 2008 Directors Guild of America Outstanding Directorial Achievement Awards and the recipients of the Guild's 2009 Career Achievement Awards were announced tonight during the 61st Annual DGA Awards Dinner at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Los Angeles. The DGA's Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film has traditionally served as a near-perfect barometer for the Academy Award for Best Director. Only six times since the DGA Award's inception in 1948 has the winner not gone on to receive the Academy Award for Best Director

Danny Boyle won the DGA's Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for Slumdog Millionaire.
Following the welcome by DGA President Michael Apted to an audience of more than 1,500 guests, actor/comedian Jon Cryer (Two and a Half Men) hosted the ceremony

"Slumdog Millionaire" continued its rags-to-riches march through Hollywood's awards season as its filmmaker, Danny Boyle, won the top honor Saturday from the Directors Guild of America.The win puts Boyle on the inside track for the same prize at the Academy Awards on Feb. 22, since the guild recipient almost always goes on to win the directing Osca, according to the AP.

Audiences have embraced Boyle's tale of a poor boy rising to fame and fortune from the streets of Mumbai, and the film triumphed at the Golden Globes and Producers Guild of America Awards, while taking the prize for best ensemble cast from the Screen Actors Guild.

Boyle said, "I should start by curiously thanking Warner Bros. for actually having the grace to do the right thing, when I think it would have been a lot easier to do the wrong thing, and pass the film on to Fox Searchlight, who are an extraordinary bunch of people."

Backstage, Boyle joked about the fact that his award was presented by Joel and Ethan Coen, who won the prize a year ago for "No Country for Old Men."

"To step into the shoes of people like the Coen brothers, I mean, it's phenomenal, because I have, as I admitted in the earlier speech, I've stolen from them all my career," he said. "I mean in a naked and appalling way."

This is Mr. Boyle's first DGA Feature Film Award

• Mr. Boyle's Directorial Team:
  Unit Production Manager: Sanjay Kumar
• First Assistant Director: Raj Acharya
• Second Assistant Director: Avani Batra
• Second Assistant Director: Sonia Nemawarkar
  

DANNY BOYLE

Slumdog Millionaire

(Fox Searchlight Pictures
and Warner Bros. Pictures)